FERN’s Friday Feed: Deforestation-free palm oil?
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
A palm-oil company, U.S. venture capital, and the fate of Peru’s rainforest
FERN and Business Insider (paywall)
“Each year, these plantations generate about $50 million in revenue for the Ocho Sur group, whose palm oil has ended up in products ranging from Cheetos to Colgate toothpaste. The $160 million that the company’s backers … have spent on its operations represents the largest foreign investment in agriculture in the history of the Peruvian Amazon,” writes Brendan Borrell. “When the company’s CEO, Michael Spoor, who joined Ocho Sur in 2019, talks about the company’s accomplishments, he draws a sharp line between the Ocho Sur Group and whoever it was who first staked a claim in the virgin territory. ‘All that we have done, we have done without deforesting anything,” he has said … Documents I obtained from a criminal investigation into Ocho Sur — along with an exclusive trove of internal company emails, bank records, and spreadsheets covering eight years of plantation operations — tell a more complex story about the role of the company’s founders in the original destruction of the rainforest.”
Why it’s so hard to make a robot chef
The New York Times
“Unlike car factories or Amazon warehouses, which rely on robots to perform repeatable actions, restaurant kitchens run on multitasking. Flipping pancakes requires a different system from one that dispenses coffee or makes spaghetti. Moreover, producing potentially sticky, gooey or cheesy foods means robots need to be easy to clean to maintain food-safety standards,” writes Julie Creswell. “Moreover, while automated systems may reduce labor costs over time, many have a steep upfront price tag — typically six figures.”
Why is the American diet so deadly?
The New Yorker
“People know that Doritos are not so good for them, but more than a billion bags are sold in the U.S. each year. Who, exactly, will be moved by the knowledge that salty-sweet ultra-processed foods might be worse than merely salty or sweet ones? Our food environments—the type and quality of food that pervades our schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods—influence our diets as much as our tastes do,” writes Dhruv Khullar. “And our food environments are shaped by our incomes, our government’s choices, and our desire for convenience, as well as active manipulation by the food industry, through things like marketing campaigns and lobbying for agricultural subsidies. During my medical residency, I often urged patients with diabetes or heart disease to eat healthy foods, only to scrounge my own dinner from onion rings and chicken tenders in the hospital cafeteria.”
How Big Potato keeps prices high
The Lever
“After decades of consolidation, just four firms now control at least 97 percent of the $68 billion frozen potato market, the antitrust cases reveal. These four companies participate in the same trade associations and use a third-party data analytics platform — PotatoTrac — to share confidential business information. The lawsuits allege the firms’ collusion has driven french fries and hash browns to record-high prices. Consumers have felt the impacts of these price hikes. The cost of fries at McDonald’s has increased by 138 percent since 2014, and hash brown prices have more than doubled in recent years at fast food joints including Jack in the Box and Hardee’s,” writes Katya Schwenk. “Between July 2022 and July 2024, the price of frozen potato products increased by 47 percent across the board, according to court documents. This rise was initially tied to a jump in operating costs among the companies that peaked in 2022 — but even as these expenses have declined over the last two years, product prices have remained high.”
Toxic ag chemicals tell a tale of two Californias
Inside Climate News
“[D]ozens of agricultural poisons increase the risk of cancer or that strawberry growers use copious quantities of particularly toxic, drift-prone pesticides on the soil before planting. These fumigants are also used on other row crops and orchards, but strawberry growers apply them in the greatest quantities. One of their favorite fumigants—1,3-dichloropropene, also known as 1,3-D or Telone—causes tumors in multiple organs and glands in rodents, including mammary glands, studies show. California listed 1,3-D as a carcinogen in 1989, yet it remains the state’s third highest-volume pesticide,” writes Liza Gross. “And in Monterey County, the top-grossing strawberry growing region … farmers applied more and more 1,3-D even as statewide use declined … according to an analysis by Inside Climate News. The ICN analysis also suggests that the burden of this pollution falls disproportionately on immigrants with limited English proficiency—people who make up a large proportion of the agricultural workforce.” (For more on this subject, check out this piece from FERN’s archive.)